FC Bayern: Max Eberl is a sports director on a leash

JA sentence that robbed the FC Bayern supervisory board meeting on Tuesday evening of any tension in advance contained an insert that was still far too little appreciated. “We had a perfect transfer period – like last year – with two players we could really use.”

Since the supervisory board Uli Hoeneß went public with this praise a few weeks ago, it was clear that Bayern would not only extend the contract of their CEO Jan-Christian Dreesen on August 25th – but also that of their sports director Max Eberl. The praise was a classic spoiler. Which supervisory board can afford to let the contract of a manager expire who is looking forward to two perfect transfer periods in a row?

The insert “like last year” revealed the secret of how Hoeneß and Eberl’s actual chief critic, the supervisory board Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, were able to agree on continuing their collaboration with the sports director. As is well known, the transfer summer of 2025 was the first in which Eberl was taken in hand by the supervisory boards. One can even say: was caught in a lasso.

Last year, Eberl wanted to buy Xavi Simons from Leipzig, the supervisory boards ordered a stop to the purchase and recommended a loan instead – and Hoeneß told the coach Vincent Kompany on his terrace at Tegernsee that he could have a piece of apple pie instead of Xavi.

This year? Eberl wanted to buy Newcastle’s left winger Anthony Gordon for a box of doubloons. This business was also stopped. However, because the Moroccan Ismael Saibari won the heart of Bayern coach Vincent Kompany during Munich’s guest appearance in Eindhoven at the end of January, the decision was made after a switch between Tegernsee and Harlaching: We don’t need a backup for Luis Díaz. We need an option at the ten position! Who knows if and when Jamal Musiala will be able to play like the old Musiala again. And if Saibari comes, then he and Serge Gnabry can help out on the left wing. What was the wording at Tegernsee? We have had a perfect transfer period. Not is.

Since the summer of 2025, Max Eberl has agreed to a division of labor in which, as sports director, he cannot realize all of his dreams. But because he has had his work closely monitored since then, he has now been contractually guaranteed that he will be able to continue this work until 2029. To put it positively, one could say: FC Bayern in 2026 is a community in which the room doors have been hung so that there are no longer any secret agreements and all decisions are made together. It fits that CEO Dreesen should sit at the table and does so as soon as concrete numbers are involved in the negotiations with the players. Eberl had previously been accused – especially when extending the contracts with Musiala and Alphonso Davies – of allowing the other side to push him financially towards the stratosphere.

How Eberl represents FC Bayern externally is well received internally

Bayern have extended their contract – also due to a lack of alternative candidates – with a sports director whose power they have gradually curtailed. This also applies to Eberl’s influence on the youth campus, which sports director Christoph Freund and Jochen Sauer have taken over as director of youth development. Eberl’s confidant Markus Weinzierl had to vacate his position as campus leader. Bayern will soon part ways with chief scout Nils Schmadtke, with whom Eberl already worked in Mönchengladbach.

What is well received internally, however, is how Eberl represents FC Bayern externally. He’s getting better and better on stage. When he goes to press conferences to present the latest acquisitions on the transfer market to the public, it is like the division of labor in Russia when the time of the tsars was dawning. Tsar Nicholas II traveled to the front in a tunic and riding trousers to represent himself. The decisions in the power center in Petrograd were made by Tsarina Alexandra, who was under the influence of the legendary itinerant preacher Grigori Rasputin.

Although Kompany’s influence on Hoeneß, and this is where the comparison is flawed, grew steadily up to the peak of Ismael Saibari’s buy recommendation. However, he is too successful as a football specialist and has stayed in office too long to be described as a traveling coach.